Orwell could have told his story without inculding the windmill. What do you think the windmill - and all the animals exhausting work - represents, or symbolizes, to the animals? To Orwell?

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The windmill symbolizes a lot of things. The mill is used as exploiting animals like Boxer for the pigs' gain. The windmill's original intent was to make life easier on the farm but Napoleon turned it into a means for social conditioning and exploitation. Napoleon also uses the windmill to manipulate Snowball. As the original inventor of this mill, Snowball wanted to really make less work for the animals on the farm. Instead Napoleon makes Snowball the scapegoat for its first destruction. The Pigs begin to reap the benefits from the windmill while the other animals are subject to even more toil and hardship. The irony is that the same mill, that once symbolized freedom and emancipation for the animals, soon symbolized slavery and betrayal. As an allegory; the windmill represents industrialization of Soviet Russia. It was an industrial revolution that, like Animal farm, was not shared by the whole population.